When spring finally rolls around after a long winter, it always feels like you haven’t seen your favourite people in months – that’s because it’s usually true! Don’t let a drop in temperatures make you and your people strangers. Start a brunch or dinner club!

The brunch or dinner club doesn’t necessarily have to be built around eating outside but the fact that they get you to leave your house is what matters most. Leaving your house for a few hours on the weekend or in the evening in itself is a triumph and it makes dinner or brunch clubs winning winter entertainment ideas. And because we are frugal Afropolitans, why not make these clubs about home-cooked food? The hosting friend(s) will cook the meal or you can make it a bring and cook – make the most of each of the club meetings.

So you want to stay outside in theory but nature makes it hard? Keeping all your entertaining outdoors as the temperatures drop is possible you just need to have the right tools for it. Think imbawula from many of our childhoods but better. Outdoor gas heaters are reasonably priced and they can make any Highveld winter’s night outside, toasty.

Can you just imagine your friends and family cosied up outdoors and with the crips of autumn in the air but staying warm?

Keep date night

Admit it, when the pressures of life mount, your interests are the first things on the chopping block. From your own self-care to your relationship, take it for granted that all those things will work themselves out unlike that work and school deadline and that parenting commitment.

Don’t let yourselves go this autumn and winter. It sounds easier to stay at home in your fleece and thermals but why go into hibernation when you can rev up the engine of our relationship? If there’s an opportunity to go out with your significant other this cold season seize it!

In Gauteng we are lucky that our winters aren’t wet – well, it’s not great for the national water crisis but it makes bundling up out and going out much easier. Why not join a hiking club that meets twice a month? That way you are guaranteed a bit of time in the outdoors and getting a chance to socialise.

Even writing this, I imagine myself bundled up, head down and rushing to get home when winter sets in. Hopefully, this is the push for us all to stay in the outdoors this autumn and winter.